Gold as a unit of currency is only about 2500 years old. Prior to that it was used heavily in jewelry and adornments. Probably because it’s not good for much else and it happens to be fantastic as a jewelry material. It’s shiney, doesn’t tarnish, and is easy to work with hand tools.
The association with wealth probably came about as a result of being associated with expensive jewelry.
To be clear, modern historians do not look for piles of gold to determine relatively how wealthy a society was. They look at their ability to produce grain and other things that facilitated trade. Because gold is only valuable as a mechanism to facilitate trade. To a civilization more worried about feeding itself than foreign luxuries, it’s quite worthless.
Gold as a unit of currency is only about 2500 years old. Prior to that it was used heavily in jewelry and adornments. Probably because it’s not good for much else and it happens to be fantastic as a jewelry material. It’s shiney, doesn’t tarnish, and is easy to work with hand tools.
The association with wealth probably came about as a result of being associated with expensive jewelry.
To be clear, modern historians do not look for piles of gold to determine relatively how wealthy a society was. They look at their ability to produce grain and other things that facilitated trade. Because gold is only valuable as a mechanism to facilitate trade. To a civilization more worried about feeding itself than foreign luxuries, it’s quite worthless.
2500 years ago we didn’t have computers and cell phones. We do now, and they all use gold.